Engelbert and the Stink of the Eurovision Song Contest – Is it Time To Leave?

I always watch the Eurovision Song Contest, most often with a mixture of wry amusement as the votes begin to come in and I find I am getting increasingly better at predicting which country will vote for which country. Mainly however I watch with light hearted interest at seeing what is happening ‘musically’ across our neighbouring European countries and I marvel, yet again, at the fact that the United Kingdom, so long the country at the forefront of innovative musical talent, have entered an act that would put Jedward to shame. Not this year, dear readers as we had our very own 70’s crooner heart throb and probably the most honest performer on the night, our gorgeous, respected Engelbert Humperdinck. And it is a testament to the man himself, that the news coverage today, reporting on the nights events, did not concentrate on how poorly he fared, but about whether it is now time to pull out of the competition altogether. I mean if the Hump can’t win it for us – who can? Humperdinck, 76, who sang first, gave a great performance with no sign of nerves and made the best of an average tune. He deserved much more that the 12 points he eventually got, but compare his song to the old Russian grannies who came second, or even Sweden’s Loreen who won with an astounding 372 points with the song Euphoria, he should have come a lot higher in the voting.

The good thing about the Eurovision Song Contest is that if you were rubbish at Geography as a child, as I was, you can pretty well make up for it by watching the three hour extravaganza and just make a note of who the countries vote for. They will more than likely border the voter and ‘votee’ and you can get a really good picture of what Europe looks like, just by watching the votes come in. Sound cynical? I’m not the only one. Even celebrities are suggesting it is time to pull out of this out dated and grossly over political competition, that has less to do with singing than Azerbaijan has to do with human rights. Lord Sugar tweeted last night, “Why do we enter the Eurovision we are a total joke. The queen should dong Cowell if he comes up with a good song and winner next year.” But even the thought of Simon Cowell behind the singer does not seem to be enough for some celebrities to want to stay in the competition. Phillip Schofield was asked by a fellow Twitter follower whether he thought viewers should have control over the Uk choice of song again and he tweeted back, “Nope, it’s time to pull out.” When another follower suggested putting forward Robbie Williams to win it for us, the presenter of This Morning replied, “Not even Robbie could win it for us, it’s too political.” Declan Donnelly from Ant and Dec suggested a new format was called for, he tweeted, “Reckon we should bin off Eurovision – let’s have EuropesGotTalent. They can’t not vote for UK with our talent. Dx” But then he and Ant would probably get the main gig if that were to happen.

And we still have not spoken about the severe corruption of the ruling family, President Ilham Aliyev and his clan in Azerbaijan, who are seemingly so indomitable that they were able to arrange for their son in law, Emin Agalarov to perform the main interval show piece, with his band, that was broadcast all over Europe. Nice publicity if you can get it but as First lady Mehriban Aliyeva was head of the organising committee, it is not surprising that she arranged for her local pop star son-in-law to sing. Described as a “mafia” by the United States embassy in Azerbaijan, the ruling family had more or less taken over the whole event.

Back to the Uk’s reaction to events last night and a poll in the online Mirror newspaper showed a considerable 67.29% of viewers thought that the UK should pull out of the song contest with a 50.78% stating the reason being that ‘Europe simply do not like us.’ So perhaps Engelbert should not be too deflated in his failure to secure victory for the UK. Most people think there is nothing we can do to win this competition now but we’d like to know what do you think? To have your say like us on Facebook and comment.